Friday, December 05, 2014

Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon

The third in Syndicate Books' reissues of Ted Lewis' three novels about Jack Carter is a bit like Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister: a lesser work marked in places by what I suspect are the author's complaints, in Chandler's case about his (presumed) disillusionment with Los Angeles, in Lewis' about art school.

Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (1977), the second of two prequels to Get Carter (original title Jack's Return Home), is less a fleshed-out novel than a set-up that never quite comes together: Carter is dispatched by his feckless bosses to their Spanish villa for a vacation that turns out to be a job minding a Mafia turncoat. And that's about it, except for an orgy of violence at the end and some bits of comedy and cruelty on the way.

But some of the the bits are delicious, the funniest probably the arrival of the janitor/butler's daughter, the grimmest the treatment of the janitor/butler by everybody, his daughter included. Read this book by all means, but after you've read Get Carter and Jack Carter's Law.

2 Comments:

Well, you have made me an offer that I cannot refuse. I shall, without too much delay, search my library (first option) or my local bookstore (second option) or Amazon (my last desperate option) for the book(s).

Ah, so many books and such little time. (Even as I type that last sentence, I have to laugh aloud about the new-found irony. But enough about all of that for now. I do not mean to be cryptic, but such is life.)

Links to this post:

About Me

This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly.
Click here to find an independent bookstore near you.